The county municipality is hanging on by a thin thread if the Conservative Party and the Progressive Party get a majority in the election next autumn, as the polls today indicate. The Conservative Party decided at its national meeting in 2023 that the county level must go away. Now the Progress Party’s Terje Søviknes promises that liquidation of the county council will be an important issue if the two blue-blue parties get a majority.
Then we can at least hope that they have learned from the last time the country was led by the right. The regional reform under Erna Solberg’s leadership was historically poorly implemented. Several counties and municipalities were merged, some voluntarily, many by force. Today, Troms and Finnmark have again become two counties, and the giant construction Viken is divided into Akershus, Buskerud and Østfold.
After overturning the structure for several years now, we need calm around the regional administration of Norway.
The amalgamation of the counties was unpopular and poorly prepared. It has cost a lot of unnecessary time, money and political power to first merge counties and municipalities, and then dissolve them. The bourgeois believe that the current government is engaging in a reversal policy when it has followed through on election promises and dissolved several units, but should rather point to itself and the poor implementation of the regional reform.
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There may be good reasons to look at the levels of administration in our country. After the counties lost control of the hospitals 20 years ago, there is little political responsibility left at the regional level. It is also true, as the right often points out, that few have a close relationship with politicians at the county level. We can stand behind a reform of the three levels of administration, constituencies, police district and court structure and more – provided that it is based on thorough preparation and adopted as a broad political settlement. And that solutions are found to the democratic deficit that occurs when the distance to the decision-makers becomes greater.
Unfortunately, there is little indication that the Conservative Party and the Progressive Party will choose such a method. It is far more likely that they will go wild at the county level with the same lack of tact as the last time they were in power, and thus create chaos and opposition, and waste large amounts of money.
After overturning the structure for several years now, we need calm around the regional administration of Norway. It is possible that the counties are becoming a redundant level of administration. But one thing is certain: Changing the framework conditions for the counties from government to government will not improve governance. The next major regional reform should be well founded, and not just the result of an ideologically driven right wing believing that large units are the answer to all challenges.
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